===TRANSCRIPT START=== Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this is week four in our Summer of Fear series. Today, we're strapping in for a ride through one of our most intense modern fears, roller coaster disasters. If you've been listening to this show since the first season, or if you've gone back and binged the whole thing, which I highly recommend you do, you'll remember that we've talked about amusement park accidents before, but this episode dials in on roller coasters specifically. Because let's face it, when people go to the amusement park in the summer, roller coasters are the rides they're really scared of. There's a reason Final Destination 3 doesn't open with a log flume accident. Nothing feels like it's going to bust apart at the seams and send you hurdling into oblivion more than the creaking, jangling wood and metal hills and loops of a roller coaster. And sometimes, it does. So buckle up, strap in, get those arms up, and get ready to scream.

What are we?

Now it is time for...

Time for...

Scared All The Time.

All right, welcome back. It's just Ed for housekeeping. There's no Chris. Chris is, I don't know, he's busy. So you got just me. So I'm gonna make it pretty quick because we have a producer role call to do and everything. But yeah, it's the latest installment of Summer of Fear. Hope you guys have been really enjoying it. We've been enjoying making them for the main feed every other week. And if you guys want more of the show, as you know, I'm sure Chris would be mad if I didn't say anything. We have a Patreon. So come check it out. You get a whole other show, New Fear Unlocked, it drops every week that the main show doesn't. So you never have to miss a week. So for as little as five bones, literally you don't have to miss any weeks of Scared All The Time. So check it out. You got that. We got a monthly live show. There's tons of physical rewards that I send out. You get handwritten stuff from me. So go check out The Tears. Go check it out. It's a lot of fun to make and people seem to be enjoying it. That said, some of those people are the best people and those people are producers. So right now, if you don't want to hear their beautiful names, if you want to be some weirdo who doesn't want to hear their beautiful names, you can skip a minute and a half. But otherwise, you have to listen to me very obviously read their names. And that's going to happen right now. Amanda Morris, Amy Phillips, Anita Andrade, Anna Banana, Anne Evans, Bambi, Buttercup Honeycut, Kate Bellinger, Cassandra, Christopher Mammaril, Cracked Paint Studios, Christine Monfort, David V, Donna B, Drew Bollinger, Echo Art at Blue Sky, Gabriel Goodfellow, Isabella, JC., Jeff Q., John H., John Nothing, just nothing, I mean, I know who he is. Jonathan Banta, Carly Cannon, Kevin Williams, Kirsten Tattersall, Kristen Schoonover, Kyle, Lauren Martinez, Lester Pearson, Logan Torres, Madeline Miller-Wien, Matt Sangstock, Matthew Barube, Barube, Melissa Larson, Michael, I Give Permission to Use My Whole Name Smith, Nick Ang, Rio, Roger E., Samantha Cardamon, Sean, Manbeard Klein, Soft G, and Gypsy, Stephanie, Timothy Moore, and Will Ferguson. All right, so those are the producers. Thank you so much to each and every one of you. You literally keep the lights on here at Scared All The Time. And now without further ado, Roller Coasters.

All right, Ed, Roller Coasters. I feel like we both probably, I'm gonna go out on a limb here, suggest that we both have roller coaster experience. We both have some roller coaster fears or certainly dislikes. Yeah. What's your history growing up with roller coasters? What parks did you go to? Did you ride them? What's the deal?

I hate roller coasters. I probably talked about it in our theme park episode. I only like wooden roller coasters because they can't go that fast.

Insane. They're so shaky.

You can't go that fast. It's like my car I'm driving now.

But they feel like they'll fall apart on you more than metal ones.

Yeah, but they'll fall apart at a slower speed. So maybe you can hop out or something.

Okay. All right. I'm not sure that logic tracks with the force of gravity.

But we'll find out later in the episode, I'm sure. So yeah, I mean, Lake Quassie, I think, was a crummy little... I mean, I'm not saying crummy. I think it probably still exists. Hope they're doing well. It's like a smaller theme park in Connecticut we'd go to. There was theme park in Maine I talked about in the last episode we'd go to. But yeah, I'm like a one crazy ride per day person because I get so motion sick. So even when I go to Disneyland, I think now it's the Incredicoaster, but I can do the roller coaster or I can do Tower of Terror, which is also now some stupid Guardians thing. Everything's changed. It feels so old.

Yeah.

I could do one or the other and then I need to have soft serve ice cream after. Because for me, I don't think it actually has any scientific reason to help, but I just like it after I feel crummy. I can't do two and then have a day. That's fun anymore.

I feel like if I got my stomach all messed up on a ride, anything dairy or ice cream would be the last thing I'd want. But I don't know.

But soft serve is hard to find around there, though. So that's why it's extra hard. Caradeli's has a stronghold in the San Francisco section of California Adventure. So it's hard to find soft serve.

I do love a good soft serve. That's something I'm not scared of soft serve.

Oh, man, I was working over the weekend and selling dumplings. And there was an ice cream man a couple spots down from us. And we did like a trade for dumplings for ice cream. And then I just never got out of the tent to get any. I'm so mad. Well, but yeah, so I don't love them. I don't go on them. I don't like them. And I don't know if I said it in the last story. My only really scary roller coaster, genuine roller coaster, not spinning things, not other type of ride, genuine roller coaster story I have is at Legoland when I went with my friends to take their kids to Legoland. Cause I don't know if anyone's ever been to Legoland, but everything is like kid size. It's not for adults.

I'm not shocked. Although the way adults act these days, regarding Lego, yeah.

Especially since Lego, I just saw something recently that if like Lego has maintained or raised value, like if you don't open these elaborate Lego sets, it's actually tracks better than gold. Jesus Christ. Like over the last 25 years, like it's consistent return and appreciation is better than just having gold as an asset. But that said, I'm at Legoland and with my friends Josh and Brandy and their kids who were very small at the time, just now they're in college and shit, which is crazy. But I have had a belly that long, like a belly on my body. So I get in and I'm with a little tiny, his daughter, who I don't know the ages, but fucking super small at this point. So he's like, oh, I'll get on with my son. You can get on with my daughter right behind us on the roller coaster. And so it's the kind that you close a bar down to lock you in. But it hit my belly. And then I'm like, oh my god, there's so much room for this girl to slide out now.

You said, oh my god, I want ice cream.

No, I wanted ice cream after. But even a little tiny, this is really not a crazy roller coaster. But I was like, by virtue of it stopping, the bar stopping on my stomach, this girl can slide right the fuck out. Like she's gonzo. And so I like kind of yell up to him. I'm like, bro, your daughter's gonna die. Like I don't, there's no way to protect your child. And he was like, just put your arms on her shoulders. He's like, it's not, it's a kiddie ride.

Yeah, it's not gonna go upside down.

Yeah, but I was still like so freaked out because I couldn't, I just, why would they design it this way? So anyway, that was my only real like holy shit moment on a roller coaster is I thought, I've just given four minutes of responsibility with this guy's kid. And I'm like, she's gonna slide out and die.

Did you ever feel like she was actually gonna slide out on the ride or once it started, were you like, oh, I can hold on to her?

I felt like once it started, I can hold on to her. It wasn't crazy. It wasn't as small as like that little dragon that they drive on a truck to like a carnival, but it was not crazy. But I do feel like my arms hurt later from just being so tense the whole time of being like, oh God, please don't let this person fly out.

I actually, my roller coaster story, I mean, I grew up riding roller coasters. I didn't like them very much until I was older. I was afraid of them, I think, just because I was an anxious kid. Like I didn't like the speed and sensation alone. I was like, no thank you. And then I would get terrible headaches on the wooden roller coasters from my head getting batted around. So it wasn't until high school that I really enjoyed a roller coaster ride. But a few years ago, I ended up, I don't think I've told this story on the podcast before, but I ended up taking also a friend's kid. Although without their permission, he was, I was asked by this guy to take his kid who was visiting. It's a child of divorce and the kid was visiting, but dad had to be on set. And so he asked me if I would take his kid to Six Flags Magic Mountain because they were supposed to go.

So it's out here, Los Angeles, Magic Mountain.

Yeah, and the kid's like seven or eight maybe. And I was like, he bought the tickets and everything. I was like, all right, it's pretty fun to go to the amusement park for free. So the kid, though, was insistent. The whole drive there, he was talking about all the rides he wanted to go on and how he wasn't really afraid of anything. And I didn't really believe him at first. But as soon as we tried one roller coaster, he loved it. So then we kind of, I tried to pattern it. So we were going on increasingly scary ones. So we didn't start with like the worst or anything.

But he was tall enough to ride them all?

He was tall enough to ride them all. Yeah.

So the last thing you want to be is with someone else's kid who's having a meltdown about not being tall enough or something.

No, he got on everything just fine. And then at the end of the day, there was this one roller coaster, like in one wing of the park that we hadn't made it to. And he really wanted to go on it. And it looked really huge, but he'd had such a good time on the other ones that I was like, yeah, man, let's do it. So there wasn't, it was the middle of the week and there weren't really a ton of people in line. So there were, I was like conscious of, as we were going through, when you go through an empty amusement park line, you just wind your way through all the gates and the signs and the posters that normally you're looking at when you're just standing there, but we weren't standing there. We were trying to get on this thing before the park closed. So I wasn't, I was aware there were like, not warnings, but signs and stuff.

You just assumed it was theming of some kind, even though you had Six Flags.

Yeah, I wasn't reading any of it. And so we got all the way out, we got on the roller coaster, they buckle us down, and they do all the keep your hands inside the car and everything, they hit the button, and the roller coaster starts moving backwards. And at first I was like, oh, they're drifting us into the proper track, and then we're gonna take off. But then it just starts going uphill backwards. And there's these speakers in the headrests of the ride, and it starts playing this pulsing sound of a heartbeat.

Oh my god.

Louder and louder. As it's pulling us up backwards.

I thought I was gonna read you the terms and conditions.

No, no, no, it's just making you even more tense. And I felt so bad for this kid, because I looked over at him as soon as I realized that like, oh, this ride is backwards, and we're not going forwards. And he had that look of kitty panic on his face in the way when a kid realizes that they're in way over their head, and there's nothing they can do. And he was squirming with that, like, please let me off, please put me down. And looking at me, like, what are we supposed to do? And I'm kind of panicking because I didn't expect this thing to be like fucking backwards.

And you're going up the way you would normally be like, click, click, click up. Yeah. So you're anticipating, like, if it keeps clicking, this is just gonna go down backwards. It's like, this is just gonna be backwards.

Yeah. And so, you know, I was like, I was like, hey, you know, it's okay. It's just a ride. It's just a ride. It's gonna be fun. I probably looked insane because I was like, oh no.

The little head speakers are like, this is not just a ride. It's like, this isn't helping. You're gonna die. What the hell did you say that time at that Woman Loves that you said, good morning, you're gonna die or something, when you talked about, like, having anxiety.

Oh, yeah. Do you wake up? Do you want to die?

Yeah, exactly. That's what's being said over the speakers. Yeah.

Yeah. And so before he starts crying, we hit the top and it just leans you backwards and drops what feels like 90 degrees straight down backwards. And I was screaming. And then I, you know, like a couple seconds into it, I looked over and he was screaming, but not like happy screaming, just like pure terror screaming.

And if I was with him, he would have been screaming and covered in puke. So it worked out that he was with you.

Yeah. So the ride finally ends and we pull back into the base of the ride and I thought this kid was dead. He was just like pale, staring off into space and you know, it unlatches and everyone's getting off the coaster and he's still just frozen. And I try, I was like, you know, I got him out of the ride and I was like, how am I going to explain to this guy that I like cooked his kid's brains on a roller coaster?

He's getting straight Fs at school now and stuff. He's just like cutting himself to feel anything.

Yeah, because at a pivotal time in his life, his adrenaline receptors were just broken.

Yeah.

But then halfway down the exit, he looks at me and he goes, that wasn't scary and was like right back to how awesome and brave he is.

So fucking malleable little kids.

Yeah. But then, so check this out. So then as I was thinking about the story for the podcast, I was like, I realized I couldn't remember. My brain got scrambled. I couldn't remember like anything else about this roller coaster. So if you're roller coaster curious, I looked it up. This ride is called the X2 and it's called the world's first 4D roller coaster because the seats, and I don't remember them doing this, but apparently the seats rotate 360 degrees independently of each other. I remember it being like a crazy twisty tourney ride. Maybe that was part of the twisty tourney was the seats were moving. I had no idea.

Yeah, cause you blacked out.

Yeah, but then I also found this little nugget on the Wikipedia page for the X2. On June 23rd, 2022, a 22 year old male reportedly sustained a fatal brain injury while riding X2. Oh no. According to a lawsuit filed by the family on March 19th of this year, 2025. The suit states that the ride was extremely rough and riders jerked around like rad galls and the ride abruptly stopped. After getting off the ride, the male reportedly complained of head pain and collapsed. He was taken to the local hospital where he was diagnosed with severe brain bleed that led to his death the following day.

Whoa.

So, I guess I could have actually killed this kid on this ride.

Yeah, dude. Maybe you got there early enough. Do you remember what year you did it?

This wasn't that long ago. This would have been like...

Could it have been 2022?

No, it was probably... I'm trying to remember.

Pre-COVID?

I think it might have been pre-COVID.

Okay, yeah. So, maybe you got it when it was just new enough that it had all... It was like, wasn't as rough.

Yeah, I mean...

It was all lubed and fresh and good to go.

Yeah, I don't remember for as crazy as it was, I don't remember it being rough because I'm, like I said, I'm really sensitive to shaky coasters. They give me horrible headaches. So, I don't know, maybe it stopped really short or something.

Either way, I mean, who needs it? I know some people, well, I met some people, wouldn't say I'm friends with them or anything, who told me that they were trying to go to all the Six Flags in America is like a thing they're trying to accomplish. And I'm like, yeah, I don't, I don't, your body's gotta be broken if you're hitting that many roller coasters.

Listen, as part of the research for this episode, I looked up specifically roller coaster accidents at Six Flags and I think almost every Six Flags in the country has had one or more deaths on a roller coaster.

Well, I'm sure we're going to run into, I'm sure you'll say it in a little bit. It probably has to do with that weird loophole thing where it's like, oh, because of the specifics of roller coasters and our theme parks, we have to self-regulate. You can't have anybody else come in and say, hey, this is supposed to have 18 wheels on it. It's got three.

Well, yes. What Ed's referring to that actually didn't bring up in this episode, but we talk about in the amusement park episode is that there's a... And I don't remember if this was...

It was Disney that I think got it started.

Yeah, Disney got a exception to the state checking out their roller coasters and their rides to make sure they were safe because their argument was their rides were so advanced that only, and I'm going to slander Imagineers here, but only the Imagineers could inspect the rides because how else would anyone even understand what's happening? On these rides. So Disney found a way to like skirt around having any sort of state or government inspections, which yes, I believe other parks have been able to also ride that loophole. So that is how some roller coaster accidents happen, but some roller coaster accidents happen just because for as safe as roller coasters are, and we're going to talk about a lot of horrifying deaths in this episode, but generally they are pretty safe, but there is a good reason we're afraid of roller coasters, and it's not just because they make us feel like we're going to die. We do sometimes die on them. They are deadly, but exactly how deadly is kind of tough to say. I will tell you, researching roller coaster accidents leads to different sources of sort of questionable veracity. There's not a ton of people who track this, and I think most of the people who do have their own agendas in tracking roller coaster accidents. So the most reliable, I think, that I found is a report that I found on healthresearchfunding.org, which, you know, a wild domain to own. We don't know who's funding what research here, but they start their report with this disclaimer, quote, with the sheer number of amusement parks around the world, it is incredibly difficult to track the number of individuals who die on roller coasters per year.

It shouldn't be hard to track that at all, actually. I don't care if it's, I don't care if every city has five theme parks. I feel like they should have to disclose when a death happens.

Well, right.

And then you should be able to find that out.

You think there'd be, yeah, a database or something. But according to this-

Not even a database, but if you just hit up all these places and you're like, anybody die? And they're like, yeah, three people. Okay, write down three, go to the next one.

Well, yeah, I mean-

You have one job according to your domain.

Well, according to this report, the number one issue associated with determining the amount of coaster deaths pertains to the fact that there isn't a specific method of catching all these fatalities, which Ed, as you're saying, the method seems to be calling the amusement park and saying how many people have died on your roller coasters, but I don't know, maybe they don't have to divulge that information.

You think they would have to.

With that being said, the majority of statistics pertaining to roller coaster deaths are estimates. Also there are very few researchers who have published studies or even looked into the amount of individuals who die or who are injured by riding amusement park rides such as roller coasters. They go on to say that Dr. Gary A. Smith, the Director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio is one of the few researchers who have spent an ample amount of time attempting to track the amount of people who have been injured and killed by amusement park rides, more specifically roller coasters. According to his research, over 4,400 children and teenagers under the age of 18 are injured on roller coaster rides in the United States, which I think Ed, you're probably going to jump in and ask this question. Do you mean 4,400 children a year? Because that seems like a lot.

Yeah, I mean, you got me.

Unclear. It's a little confusing. I couldn't find if he meant 4,400 children as of the writing of this report or 4,400 children a year.

Well, as a person who got injured at a theme park, I mean, it's a year sounds right, because injury doesn't have to be like life threatening.

That's true. It does say the report then goes on to say that the number accounts for about 20 children a day during the peak season for amusement parks. This number could be exponentially higher, but the problem is that many injuries are not monitored and recorded for review. So, I guess, yes, if you're thinking about injuries as how many kids a day get a cut on a roller coaster or smack their knee getting on or off the roller coaster.

So 365 times 20 is 7300. So let's remove a bunch of those for peak time of year. So yeah, I bet you it's per year, the 4400 number. And an injury can be anything that's, you know, if your kid leaves different than they showed up, that counts.

Sure, right. Smith also notes that injuries from roller coasters are far more common than deaths. Not surprising.

Oh yeah, no kidding, bud. Jesus.

Good thing he's a doctor. What a smart guy.

Yeah, thanks for telling us what we already know. You should work for the Atlantic.

He says, we've got 4400 injuries in this yearly period compared to 52 deaths tied to roller coasters logged in reports from the Consumer Product Safety Commission in between 1990 and 2004. So just a handful of deaths per year as compared to 4400 injuries. Unfortunately, for reasons that I also couldn't find, the Consumer Product Safety Commission no longer tracks data associated with deaths and roller coasters. I assume probably because of lobbying from the amusement park industry or something.

Yeah, or just defunded through, you know, maybe they were using federal funding in some way or state funding and now all that shit's gone.

So the article then says, and this cracked me up, it is therefore generally up to media outlets to, quote, produce information pertaining to recent deaths from amusement parks.

Oh, yeah, they'll do it. They're already on top of that.

They're calling anyway, which sounds like a saying that it's up to them to produce the information. Sounds like a fancy way of saying make it up.

Well, no, I just think that, you know, the deaths are uncommon enough where, like, if someone dies, local news is going to tell you. Like, if it bleeds, it leads type of thing.

Yeah, and I guess, you know, this is why now that the Consumer Product Safety Commission no longer tracks the data, if you really wanted a nationwide survey of these roller coaster deaths, you'd probably have to, you know, try to talk to all the news networks that have already done the local data collecting and then somehow put that all together into a larger picture. But the site notes that statistics are an important factor to take into consideration when you begin riding an ample amount of roller coasters.

Go ahead.

Well, it's just a funny way of saying that, you know, if you ride too many roller coasters, statistically, your life may be in danger. But when they say ample, they're talking a ton of coasters before mathematically you'd be in danger. There are over 297 million people in the United States alone that have had the opportunity to ride 1.7 billion different amusement park rides, most of which are roller coasters. And then I think that number means literally how many times the rides have been ridden, not that the US has 1.7 billion roller coasters.

I was about to say, it's like, shouldn't I be tripping over a roller coaster every time I leave the house?

Yeah, I think they mean that 1.7 billion rides have been taken. But still, we're talking about a ton because the case study conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services tells us that all of those people in all of those rides, only 40 were killed between 1994 and 2004, which I think is the same number the Consumer Product Safety Commission came up with.

Yeah, and also the last number, because I'm sure that department is also gone. So that's the last number we'll ever get.

Yeah, 11 of those fatalities were a result of the true nightmare, injuries from falls or coaster collisions. So only 11 were like the worst, worst case scenario that you have nightmares about. 18 of the 40 died from medical conditions that may have been exacerbated by riding coasters.

Okay.

15 of the fatalities were due to cardiac issues or brain hemorrhages, and the remaining 11 deaths were all caused by specific injuries and related to individuals who were employed by the amusement parks. So if you do the math, and the Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions did, the chances of dying on a roller coaster are somewhere around 1 in 24 million.

Okay.

So...

You're probably pretty good to get on one.

You're probably good to get on one this summer. I would much rather take the dice roll of getting on a roller coaster as opposed to swimming in pond water without my nose plugs in.

Shit, man. You can't do anything because of these damn amoebas, man.

The amoebas, man. Now, this relatively low number hasn't stopped law firms from putting up SEO keyword-loaded blogs to support those rare clients in need of support after a roller coaster-related tragedy. One of the other websites I found in my research was from law firm Denana Points, who have a page on their site called, quote, death by roller coaster, startling United States statistics. Okay. They go through a lot of the other numbers that these previous reports have, although more confusingly and with much worse writing, they elaborate on some of the statistics in ways that I'm not sure are accurate, but do sort of help paint a fuller picture.

Okay.

They say, quote, four of the 11 deaths tied to external causes were linked back to mechanical failures, like derailments. Three of the 11 fatalities were linked to rider misconduct, like disabling safety devices or entering restricted areas.

So that's victim blaming that one, yeah.

That's victim blaming. And three other deaths resulted from failure of safety restraint systems like lap bars and shoulder harnesses.

You got a fat guy and a child like I've dealt with.

We'll hit some other fat guy stories in a little bit. That does seem to be an ongoing concern.

We as a nation and me as a person, we all got to slim down a bit to get on rides and on planes and everything else. We got to do it to help out society here, folks. It's all a fucking hit the gym.

Our roller coaster accident attorneys note that about half of the roller coaster fatalities resulted from medical conditions. Several medical conditions can be exacerbated by riding a coaster, including heart disease and asthma. 18 deaths from medical conditions, including five victims aware of their preexisting conditions, two of whom were on anticoagulants and hemorrhaged. These 18 deaths comprised eight intracranial hemorrhages, seven heart conditions, one asthma attack, one aortic laceration, and-

A partridge in a pear tree?

One categorized as unknown. So I guess someone who just died on a roller coaster for no apparent reason, from fear. They died from fear.

Yeah, probably from fear. It seems like with the exception of derailment or a mechanical failure or a drunk carny operating the machine, kind of seems like you can cover your ass with a sign a little bit. You can kind of be like, hey, anyone with pre-existing heart conditions, don't get on if you have asthma, don't get on if you're whatever, and you're good.

Most roller coasters have those signs, I'm pretty sure.

It seems like everybody dying got on knowing that they were told they have 14 beats left of their heart, and they were like, oh, I'm going to use it this way.

Now, Danaena Points Law Firm, they're for the people. They're looking out for you. So they include a section called Recommendations for Preventing Further Horrific Roller Coaster Fatalities, even though this will obviously cut against their profits.

Yeah, like, listen, we want to represent you, but if we have to meet, I can help you out. But wouldn't it be better for both of us if we never met?

Exactly.

So here's ways to avoid needing us.

The researchers for this particular study have been fired. They concluded that the prevention of roller coaster deaths relies on, quote, establishing an effective surveillance system for amusement ride injuries. Okay, big brother.

Okay, about to say it, like again, not stopping you dying. It's just like we now have proof that you were on the ride.

Engineering the rides to better protect both riders and employees, improving training and supervision of ride operators with regard to safety precautions, and posting warning notices regarding medical conditions near the rides. So basically, the plan for making roller coasters safer here seems to boil down to make them safer with that.

Yeah, except for the first part, which means make them more easily prosecutable.

Yeah.

Like the other two just seem like real first thought, that should have been the case anyway stuff.

Once again, both the doctors and the lawyers involved in this episode so far, I feel like we could be doing their jobs, but the blog goes on to say, and this is verbatim from the website, for instance, our roller coaster accident attorneys mention that rides could be designed to automatically shut down, in parentheses, safely, we hope, when a rider releases or disables a safety restraint, or when a ride operator leaves the safe operating area. Our roller coaster accident attorneys, again, loaded with SEO here, add that an effective and enforceable system for thorough ride safety inspections in accordance with nationally accepted safety standards on a regular schedule would also be a strong step in the right direction. So besides being very hopeful that someone out there is Googling roller coaster accident attorneys, I'm not sure what we can really learn from Danae points here, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. We can't talk about modern roller coaster disasters that might be prosecuted by a law firm, roller coaster accident attorneys such as these, without traveling back through time and talking about how we got roller coasters in the first place. Now, Ed, you'll probably remember, but I'll shout this out to the audience. This is a first for Scared All The Time. We're 50, I think six-

This will be 57, I think.

57 episodes in and-

Not including the bonus show.

This is the first time that we're zooming in on a specific fear that was already part of another fear.

Oh, yeah.

So, Theme Park Disasters was episode 16, released all the way back last spring in the Ancient Times of the year 2024.

Take us back.

You may remember it or you may not. I don't really remember a ton of it, which is why I want to take a second to take a closer look at the history of Roller Coasters even though we did touch on this in the Theme Park Accidents episode. So, apologies if any of this sounds familiar, but I think it's all really interesting and I assume we have a lot of listeners who are also not going to remember any of this. So, we can trace the origins of the Roller Coaster to 17th century Russia, where members of the aristocracy in St. Petersburg.

Oh, yeah, I remember this. Yeah, Amerikansky Gorky or whatever.

Yep.

Yeah.

They would race down what were called Russian mountains, wooden ramps covered in ice. Riders would climb a tall staircase, plop onto a sled or a block of ice, which could not have been comfortable.

No way.

Especially in Russia. I assume if it's cold enough that there's other ice on the ground. So, it's like the inverse of a water slide.

Sure, yeah.

Just a fully frozen ride. But you would get on a sled or a block of ice and you'd shoot down the slope. Sometimes, they would hang festive colored lanterns around it for atmosphere. And these gravity slides became enormously popular with the Russian elite. Catherine the Great even had the bright idea to build a summer version with wheeled carts that didn't require ice for the two weeks of summer they had over there. According to CFJC Today, Catherine kept things classy by adding a tea pavilion next to her coaster so she could entertain the ladies of the court after some zipping fun. So tea pavilions did not stick around as a roller coaster tradition. But the idea of the roller coaster moved from Russia to France where legend has it that after the defeat of Napoleon, Russian soldiers in Paris shared their exhilarating coaster pastime with the French and by 1817, Paris had its first amusement ride hit. The Promenade Ariane or Aerial Walks at Parc Bourgeon. This ride was essentially a gentle wheeled coaster on tracks where riders rode in carts that locked to the track and glided down a curving slope.

Yeah man, they're not as hardy a people as the Russians. They didn't strap a rope around an ice cube. They were like, oh, let's take a gentle ride through the pavilion.

This was more the lazy river of roller coasters.

Yeah, it seems like it.

Around the same time, another Parisian attraction called Les Montons Russes de Belleville opened. Reportedly, the first to feature cars fully secured to the track, not just with like fitting wheels, but the cars were fully locked to the track. And these also, I believe the riders would sit sideways on these. So it was sort of, again, just like Lazy River, scenic railway type ride with a little bit of curve and dip and what have you.

Gotcha.

They were essentially inventing that crucial roller coaster recipe of track plus cart plus gravity. Something I do know that we pointed out in our theme park accidents episode is that many languages still call roller coasters Russian mountains. And so the Spanish call them Montaugna Rusa or the Montaing Rus in French. And ironically, I think this is the proper use of ironic, Russians today call coasters American mountains.

That's what I said, Amerikancky Gorky.

Yeah, I guess it's just a tribute to the fact that they really only became popular. I mean, I feel like all political leanings aside, you'd think somebody is into Russian history and supremacy as Putin. And they would have changed that. How hard is that to change?

I mean, I think even there, they're like, you're not just gonna change the Gulf of Mexico for no reason, right?

That's true.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think it's probably even under that dictatorship.

The article from CFJC then tells us that roller coasters didn't make it to the US until half a century later, when Pennsylvania's Mouch Chunk Switchback Railroad opened, which Mouch Chunk later became known as Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. And we stumbled into one of this show's early controversies.

Early faux pas.

Ed and I didn't know who Jim Thorpe was.

Back then.

We do now.

Yeah, we sure do.

A hundred people told us. But the Mouch Chunk train was originally used to haul coal up and down a steep hill. But by 1844, the railroad started offering passenger rides down the mountain at hair-raising speeds of up to 50 miles an hour. So people in the 1800s were built different, man.

They were built like coal. They were built like coal.

Yeah. Take this rickety ass Indiana Jones coal ride and pay for it.

And walk back up from the bottom. I don't even know if it took you back up.

No, they were in need of entertainment.

But I googled it. And yes, it says that it's called the American Mountains because the modern roller coaster with wheels on rails was popularized by the United States.

Yes.

So if we all were still riding blocks of ice, we'd probably be the other way around. But I guess we made it popular to that type. And they stopped using ice. So they felt they should attribute it to us, which I guess is a baller move. It's nice of them. Yeah, it's cool that they changed with the times.

International cooperation. That's the kind of reaching across the aisle we like to see. That American popularity began in 1884 when America's first proper roller coaster opened at Coney Island. Though called the Switchback Railway, the same name as the Mouch Chunk Switchback Railway, it was only inspired by that ride. I guess maybe that ride became popular enough that they thought that that's how they would get people to come. And this coaster was relatively not much of a ride by today's standards. It traveled six miles an hour down a 600 foot long one way track.

Wait, 600 feet, six miles an hour? I actually can't do that math. But yeah, you're on it for a second. You're not one second, but you're there for a bit.

This was also a ride where the seats faced sideways as well. So, and it only costs a nickel, but it was so popular at A Nickel A Pop that it earned its designer $600 a day.

Whoa, this is back when you can design it and own it.

That's a lot of goddamn nickels. Can you do that math, Professor?

So I'm sorry, it's how much money per day?

600 bucks a day at the price of one nickel.

That would be, oh my God, I broke the internet. $600, that's actually not as many as I thought it would be. It's 12,000 nickels, but that's a lot of rides.

That's 12,000 rides, yeah. And at the time, I don't know what the population of New York was. I guess it was probably still in the large millions.

Yeah, but I mean, just in terms of how long each ride takes, maybe there's five cars that go at once, you'd still probably be running that shit from like sunup to sundown.

Yeah, the slow tortoise ride.

People are walking, still talking to you, fully having conversations, just walking alongside it.

I mean, honestly, I didn't see this in my research, but I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason that Roller Coasters got sped up was just you could fit more rides in per day.

Oh, 100%.

People like this. If they go faster, we can make a lot more money.

And what the average person walks, four miles an hour. So it's basically going just at a jog speed. So yeah, we gotta speed, because I imagine the longer and longer and longer running times of movies now, I mean, theater owners have enough problems as it is, but you'd fit a lot less screenings in if your movie is three hours long, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

You're selling less tickets.

Same idea.

It's also why Tesla became shorter. The original Teslas, I thought, were very good looking vehicles, but then they got squatter and squatter and I think quite ugly. And it was because they can, every couple inches they can shave off, they can fit another row on the cargo ships from China or wherever else.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Makes sense though. Anyway, this coaster, slowness aside, was such a hit that it sparked a craze for more in the United States. And within a couple of years, more thrilling designs emerged featuring steeper, taller drops and different kind of fun elements like dark tunnels and painted scenery. I'm sure some more lanterns. Still no mention of tea cozies at the end, but you know. With innovation comes experimentation and some early experiments were kind of insane. Case in point, there was an infamous ride that I don't think we touched on in the previous episode called the Flip Flap Railway at Coney Island.

I don't think we did.

1890s. This was one of the first coasters to feature a loop-de-loop.

No.

I never.

What year?

1890s.

That seems real early to be defying gravity in that way.

But here's the thing. The problem wasn't so much that they were defying gravity. The problem actually was that they were creating too much gravity. So, I didn't know this. It makes sense when you hear it. But the thing about loop-de-loop coasters is that the loops are not perfect circles. They're more a sort of teardrop shape because perfect circles creates terrible g-forces. So, if you imagine one of those, what do they call them? That they put the astronauts on in NASA.

Yeah, I don't know the name, but yeah, they're like centrifugal force machine things.

Yeah, those whip you in a perfect circle. It's the same idea, basically, if you end up taking a perfect circle loop-de-loop. According to an article in Mental Floss, one source estimates, and I can't believe this, but one source estimates that riders of the Flip Flap Railway experienced a g-force of 12.

No.

For comparison, fighter pilots typically experience a g-force of seven.

Yeah.

One newspaper declared the Flip Flap and another coaster called the loop-de-loop, the, quote, unholy terrors of the beach. And if you listened to our last episode on Sharks, you know that this was before people thought sharks bit people. So the nastiest thing you had to worry about at the beach was getting trapped on the Flip Flap Railway and getting knocked completely unconscious.

Well, I mean, I have to imagine you're going into G-Lock or whatever every time you go into that loop, because that's the G-induced loss of consciousness that you see like when people on videos of those like crazy rubberband things or like fighter pilots or the rare thing where they get to bring a reporter up in the backseat and they just like pass out and their eyes roll back. I have to imagine you're just using like a broomstick to push limp bodies off the fucking roller coaster at the end to bring them back. Like everyone must have passed out.

Yeah, I went a little bit down. So I couldn't remember the term G-Lock, but I did want to find comparisons for people. So I went down this rabbit hole a little bit. Stunt planes are designed to withstand G-Forces of up to 10 or even 12 Gs, but stunt pilots who provide rides to the general public rarely exceed four. This is because the average person does not have the special training necessary to handle more than four Gs.

Yeah, it's like a whole lot of breathing and like having to push your blood back to your heart and stuff.

Yeah, G-Forces can fuck up your blood pressure something crazy. It's called cerebral hypoxia or G-Lock, which is, as Ed said, the gravity-induced loss of consciousness. And throughout the 90s, the US. Air Force actually lost like one aircraft per year due to G-Lock.

Yeah, it was probably before, I don't know what year, but they invented the G-Suits, which inflate different parts of your limbs, so to stop the blood from going to your extremities and back up to where it needs to be.

Yes.

I only know this because blue angels, they have a time limit amount of how much time they can be a blue angel, but they don't wear G-Suits because they're flying so close together in such tight formations, they don't want any part of their body to suddenly inflate or have anything that they can't control and accidentally move their arm, part of an inch and now you're fucking always people are watching you from the ground as a bunch of planes fall out of the sky as you crash into each other. So yeah, that's kind of like if you ever watch a video of those people in their planes, they're just like making the craziest faces because they're trying to like do the things you're talking about, the techniques they've learned to keep them from passing out. But yeah, even then I think in the last blue angel thing I watched or whatever was, I think they said same thing you just said, which is like I think 775 is kind of the highest they go just for a burst here and there. So yeah, these people, this thing was just like crippling people, like ruining brains.

I think the Flip Flap Roller Coaster might have given a generation of New Yorkers brain damage.

That's what I'm thinking.

I can't, either that or that 12 number is just poorly calculated.

It's got to be. They accidentally, maybe it was meant to write two or something.

Yeah. Anyway, by the early 1900s, the golden age of roller coasters was in full swing. There were hundreds of roller coasters across the US. By the 1920s, over 1500, each trying to outdo the others in height, speed, and thrill factor. Coaster technology also improved rapidly with stronger materials, smoother tracks, multiple car trains, and crucially, better braking and safety systems. Somebody tell the roller coaster accident attorneys, we already have braking and safety systems.

We tried doing it early on and they actually needed to do it because it's not like, what was it, the Stanley Steamer or whatever. I think that was maybe the first car they put a horn on.

Oh yeah.

And I want to say it was just because they knew the brakes were so bad.

Right.

That they were like, it's not going to fucking stop. You got to let people know I'm coming. So yeah, they don't even have that option.

One pivotal safety innovation came in 1912 when inventor John Miller introduced the, quote, under friction wheel, also called the upstop wheel. Before this, coaster cars mainly relied on side friction wheels that ran along the sides of the track, which kept the cars locked to the track but limited speeds and didn't always prevent derailments on sharp curves or drops. Miller's idea was to add a third set of wheels that gripped underneath the rails, locking the train to the track. This made coasters much safer and allowed for more daring designs. After this point in 1912, coaster hills got steeper and taller and the speeds got even faster because engineers rested easy knowing the trains wouldn't literally jump the rails when coming over a crest.

They hoped. Yeah.

Although, as we mentioned in the theme park's disaster episode, not every coaster wanted to stay on the tracks. In 1902, a Coney Island coaster designer actually tried to build a ride where the cars would jump a gap in the track on purpose.

Oh yeah. What the hell was it called? It was the one with the sandbags?

It was called the Leap the Gap, also known as the Cannon Coaster. So the idea was that you'd shoot out of a tunnel that looked like a giant cannon, fly over a missing section of rail, and land on the other side in one piece. And the sandbags you're thinking of are that they tested the coaster with sandbags and only managed a few successful jumps. But any slight change in weight or weight distribution would send the car crashing off the ride completely. So no passengers were ever launched to their doom. Although urban legends insist that there were fatal tests which ended up attracting crowds to the finished ride, which replaced the gap in the tracks with a fake cannon boom noise when you exited the barrels.

So I mean, that's still kind of cool.

Still kind of cool. Not as exciting as leaving the tracks.

Yeah, but it's definitely more exciting than leaving your mortal coil or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

If they left the gap there.

Leaving your soul, leaving your body.

Yeah.

So with all that said, by the 1920s, roller coasters were basically what they are today. I mean, obviously, there are even more crazy designs now, but you could ride a roller coaster from the 1920s that was well maintained, and you'd be like, oh, this is what I expect from a roller coaster. So with all that said, let's turn to Coasterpedia's list of the deadliest roller coaster accidents in history to guide us through the early years of roller coaster disasters. One of the earliest recorded coaster fatalities, possibly the first in history, happened in 1906 on another Loop the Loop coaster, this one at White City Amusement Park in New Orleans. On May 30th, 1906, a car full of riders jumped the track due to poor upkeep of the wooden structure. The car careened off the ride, and one man was killed with three others badly injured. A single death might not sound like much, but in 1906, it was shocking. The idea, as shocking as the idea that a shark might want to take a bite of you.

Got you.

Nobody thought about dying on roller coasters. I think everybody kind of thought, well, if I'm paying to go on it, it must be safe, but not true.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty wild for a time period, which has got to be not far out. I don't remember every part of our Waking Up During Surgery episode, but apart not far out from like you get a cut and then you are already writing sympathy cards for the loss of that person.

Yeah, exactly.

That they were still so blindly and naively were like, there's no danger in the sea. There's no danger on this manmade wooden insanity machine.

I think, Pete, like if I try to put myself in the shoes of a person in the mid-1800s, part of me feels like everything would be scary. But then part of me also feels like these are just new, weird, exciting things. And maybe the excitement and the cultural thrill around it just sort of, you didn't really think about it as much.

I think if you got through your factory job-

That's true, yeah.

You're like, what the fuck is going to be worse than this?

Life was more dangerous back then. Yeah, you probably knew five people that died in a shirt waste fire factory or whatever, factory fire.

Yeah, then you did people who died at whatever hell they used to be called pleasure, not pleasure cruises, but they had like weird new pleasure gardens or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from New Orleans, we head back to Coney Island, ground zero of coaster innovation and also ground zero of coaster carnage. In 1910, the popular Rough Riders coaster, named after Teddy Roosevelt-

Teddy Roosevelt, I bet, yeah.

Famous cavalry, showed just how dangerous that old style of side friction coasters could be. The ride had a human operator controlling the speed, and on one fateful day in 1910, the operator took a turn way too fast. Two entire cars broke loose and flew off the track, hurling 16 people out into the open air above Surf Avenue. Four people surfed straight to their deaths on the pavement below. And they kept the Rough Riders Coaster operating after this incident, saying it was just operator error that would never repeat itself. But, listener, it did repeat itself. Five years later, in 1915, a car took a high-speed corner and went flying 30 feet in the air, this time flinging six people out. Three of those were killed, one seriously injured while two, a mother and her young son miraculously survived by holding on to the wreckage for dear life.

I think we talked about these people.

We did, yeah.

In the past.

We won't go...

I thought you were going to say, and two fell directly into a shark's mouth.

Yeah. If you want to hear more about the mother and her son who survived, go listen to the theme parks episode. We detail the whole case with a lot more specifics there. But point being, after this second accident, the Rough Riders coaster was finally shut down for good, having claimed a total of seven lives in five years, which is...

That's so crazy...

.better numbers than some serial killers.

Yeah.

This second Rough Rider disaster is often cited as the first major roller coaster disaster in America. Even though I think it was less people were killed and injured, I think it was probably more dramatic and probably made the news a bit more dramatically because of the woman hanging on with her kid.

I can't even imagine if they had like local news back then, like traditional local news on TV, where it's like, we now turn to a story of a real rough ride. When the rough rider, Coney Island thing, claims another seven souls or whatever.

Meanwhile, up in Massachusetts, another coaster was earning a deadly reputation, the Derby Racer at Revea Beach just outside Boston.

People hate that place, but they have real good roast beef sandwiches up there.

I've never been.

Yeah.

I wonder if they still have the Derby Racer.

Don't know.

This was a high-speed racing coaster with two tracks side by side. I'm sure you've seen these kinds of coasters. They still exist. They're popular all over the world. But the early versions were insanely dangerous. This one opened in 1911, and within its first few years, killed multiple people. In one incident, even the company's own treasure was thrown from the roller coaster and killed along with another rider, after which the owners finally installed some primitive safety restraints.

I don't know, the treasurer? I mean, anytime someone within the organization, now I'm questioning if this was a hit.

That's true. That's true.

Interestingly, they started to fix it after they got rid of someone who may have been skimming from the top or whatever.

Yeah, or threatening to reveal the books.

Expose something.

Passengers continued to be ejected and injured in 1917, 1923 and 1929 as the Derby Racer cars careened around turns. Over its 25 year span, the Derby Racer killed or critically injured a number of riders, somewhere between three to four deaths and many serious injuries. Although the record keeping as the dead treasure, I'm sure found out before he was killed was a little loosey goosey in the field beach. So it got so bad though, that the Derby Racer amassed quote, the most abysmal safety record in the history of roller coasters, according to CFJC Today. Finally, management gave up and shut the ride down for good in 1936, which is-

I don't like that it was management's choice, by the way. There's nothing that can stop them after receiving an F minus on their safety card or whatever, that's just, again, up to them to be like, ah, it's too much of a headache, let's just close it. There should have been some entity that can force you to close it at that point.

Well, I mean, it took them, what, seven years? The last injury or death was 1929, so it still took them seven years to close the roller coaster.

That's what I'm saying. That's why we need regulation on a lot of things. If you leave it up to these people, they're going to keep selling tickets to-

It took the return of the spirit of Bob Cratchit or whoever was thrown off that roller coaster to them.

Oh yeah, yeah. We needed some- Shut it down. We shouldn't have to rely on fucking Charles Dickens ghosts to change the CEO's mind or whatever. Didn't we talk in the theme park episode about some fucking state senator's kid died before anything? I don't even think anything changed actually after that.

Yeah, that was a more modern accident.

Yeah, yeah, 100%, but I'm just saying it like-

Oh, was that the beheading on the water ride?

Yeah, the kid ended up being some big wig son.

Jesus. Well, by the end of the roaring 20s, roller coasters were beloved, but they were also feared. There had been enough of these headline grabbing accidents that you knew when you boarded one of these things that you were taking a small risk. And then in 1930, the United States experienced what was, to that time, the worst roller coaster disaster in history. On July 24th, 1930, a packed roller coaster at Krug Park in Omaha, Nebraska suffered a catastrophic failure. The coaster was called the Big Dipper, which is a name that would become infamous again in the future. More on that coincidence in a moment. But according to howstuffworks.com, it was just after 6 p.m. when a train full of riders was partway up the lift hill and a crucial bolt under one of the cars worked itself loose. This bolt held the brake shoe in place and once it fell out…

Was it Boeing that made this?

Yeah. Once it fell out, the brake shoe dropped and got snagged in the running wheels of the train. In an instant, the train jerked off the rails and smashed through a flimsy guardrail along the track. The lead car plunged to the ground 35 feet below, dragging the next three cars with it. All four of those cars filled with riders collapsed in a heap of wood, metal and flesh at the base of the coaster, crushing everyone on board. Four people were killed, 17 others were seriously injured, and many of the victims were teenagers or young adults out for some summer fun. The local fallout was brutal. Omaha city officials were so appalled that they took an unprecedented step and immediately banned all roller coasters within the city of Omaha.

Oh, wow. It seems like a bit like an overreaction to it, but better than letting them go seven more years and claiming 20 more lives.

Yeah, exactly. The Big Dipper was torn down, and without its star attraction, Krug Park closed in 1940.

Oh my God. Yeah, they tore it down too. It was crazy. They were just like, we want salt the earth here. We want no memory of the Big Dipper.

Yeah. Newspapers at the time, of course, played this up and really leaned into some wild headlines like this all-timer. They rollercoast to death and injury over photos of the victims.

Yeah. These guys rule. Those are good at their jobs.

Some real yellow journalism.

I feel like we talked a little bit about the Dippers in the last step in the theme park.

We did.

We touched on the dip.

Because there was a second Big Dipper accident in 1972 in the UK. This one at Battersea Park on May 30th, 1972, when their Big Dipper malfunctioned and became the site of the worst roller coaster accident in history. This one had been running since 1951. So 20 years after the initial Big Dipper accident, this one opened. I guess maybe no one knew what the Big Dippers in America had been getting up to.

No, I can't. Definitely not.

According to the Mirror UK, the Big Dipper was crammed to the rafters with children and teenagers on that fateful sunny day in late May. The coaster's train had been pulled up the initial hill countless times before, but this time the hauling cable snapped. The train rolled backwards down the tracks and its emergency braking system failed. The cars rapidly gathered speed, whipped around a curve, derailed from the track and piled up on top of one another. Five children died and 13 people were injured. Carolyn Damczyk was 14 at the time of the accident and she told the Independent, quote, I told everyone to stay where they were as I tried to find a way down. But I realized as I was walking down that I was walking on blood. Over the course of the investigation that ensued, it transpired that the Big Dipper was half a century old with a total of 66 defects, including missing brakes, rotting wood, and a poorly maintained haul rope along a misaligned track.

I mean, I don't know where Battersea Park is other than that Pink Floyd cover. So I know the power station. I don't know if it's like where that is in relation to the water. But I do know that Coney Islands right on the water. And so it just seems like, yeah, you're having a wooden ride with like the water is rotting the wood, rusting the metal.

Yeah, the salt water.

Yeah, salt water beating it up. And it just seems like, yeah, we should probably be checking on this stuff if it's kind of near the elements in this way. It's not like Magic Mountain, which is sitting out in the sun. But even that, you know, the sun's gonna break down the rubber, blah, blah, blah. Like, the elements gotta be tough on these rides.

They did have inspectors, but monthly inspections by qualified engineers only involved comments on the visible condition of the coaster rather than its mechanical operation or structural integrity.

Huh.

So basically, some make-work guy was showing up and being like, oh, it looks good, mate. And then just like, off to the pub.

You're saying I can have as much popcorn as I want?

Yeah. As early as May 1951, so like the year this thing opened, an empty car had derailed, and the same brake problem had occurred a few weeks before the tragedy and two cars left the rails at the bottom of the hill. The night before the accident, the train failed to stop at the return station and overshot it by 10 meters.

That's a long amount of space.

Yeah.

It's 30 feet.

The teenage brake man, one of those later accused during the court case of having been taking and administering illegal drugs while on shift, cried out that he couldn't stop the train with his manual brake.

Yeah. It's interesting how like what like everything is teenagers, like teenagers died, teenagers are running the operation. The person who was like, I think I'm stepping on blood. She was 14 who, which heroic 14 year old. She's like, everybody wait here.

Yeah.

I'm going to figure this out. I'm sure she like was a leader in her community after this, but it just seems just funny that like everyone was a child.

Yeah. She, she led the community back to the roller coaster with torches to just burn the fucking thing down.

Burn it to the ground. And it was like, we can't be out here all night. We got to be back for the factory whistle blowing in 20 minutes, guys. We have to go back to, oh my God, they work at a roller coaster rail factory. It's their own shoddy craftsmanship that led to their demise. Yeah.

I guess it's somewhat comforting that the worst roller coaster accident in history still only claimed the lives of five people. The scale of these disasters is actually fairly small, even if the terror it strikes in the hearts of anxious riders is very real. But just because these accidents don't usually claim a lot of victims doesn't mean that they aren't scary. As modern coasters grow even larger and more extreme, there are more ways than ever for things to go wrong. And when the human body is left to face the extreme forces of steel and speed, there can be some pretty grotesque results. One such incident that caught my eye happened the evening of June 14th, 1986 at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada, the site of the world's largest indoor roller coaster, the Mindbender.

Who's naming these things, man?

Well, they couldn't name it the Big Dipper, so what else are you going to call it? You know, it's the second on the list. Standing at 145 feet tall and featuring a triple loop, this coaster was a beast to behold. It became instantly popular when it opened a few months before the accident.

Must be a massive fucking mall. All those loops and stuff, like inside?

This is right at sort of the peak of mall hysteria when people were building bigger and bigger malls.

Well, yeah, mid 80s, yeah.

And the mall was packed on this particular evening because not only were there people shopping and people waiting in line for this giant indoor roller coaster, the mall was also hosting a concert. What nobody knew is that the Mindbender had already been shut down twice that day because the operator had heard what he called a weird metallic sound coming from the train.

Good on them, though. Good on them for speaking up.

Yeah, he tried. When the ride reopened, 12 people joyfully got on. Now, if I had been the operator, I would have gone to each of those 12 people and said, I heard a weird metallic sound coming from the train. But I guess he didn't want to lose his job. Shortly into the ride, disaster struck. According to Wikipedia, one car's wheel assembly had become detached from both the track and car itself, causing the car to sway back and forth across the tracks.

Oh, man, you know that went flying out into an orange Julius.

Pretty much.

Two more people in there.

The car became damaged and the lap bar restraints unlocked and released, throwing three passengers 100 feet to the concrete floor below. Tony Mandrusiak, 24, and his fiance, Cindy Sims, 21, were violently killed, and Sims was partially decapitated when her body was thrown into a concrete ledge.

What kind of brutalist architecture was this mall? Everything's concrete?

Just razor blade ridges and walls. The third person survived being thrown from the train with permanent physical disabilities. The train continued to move along the track and into the final loop, again, with the lap bar restraints unlocked, but the friction from the car's derailment slowed the train and prevented it from clearing the loop. The car stalled upside down, and David Sager, 24, couldn't hang on without the proper restraints, and he died when he fell from the ride straight to the mall floor.

That's me. That's me. There's no way I, every time I watch a movie and anybody's hanging from anything, I'm like, no fucking way. I have, I can barely do a pushup. I would just be like, goodbye, and just let go. Like, I can't, I have zero, no matter, I don't believe there's any situation where adrenaline would provide like mom strength for me. Like, I just know I would be like, this is it for me, bye.

Yeah, I have.

Because if they had just hold on, they might have lived, you know?

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I don't know. I would have, I would, I have no upper body strength. I would try to like tangle myself into whatever restraints were there or something like.

Yeah.

But the train then rolled backwards down the loop and the detached car crashed into a concrete pillar about halfway down, stopping the train abruptly and injuring 19 more people. So really terrible indoor roller coaster accident.

Yeah, that is, that's fucking terrible. And it's also terrible because, and I'm not saying any of these are better anywhere else, but the idea of being at a theme park in a roller coaster crash is you're like, well, we're at a theme park. But if you're just trying on shoes at Foot Locker and you're just hearing all these screams, like you didn't leave your house today to like go to a theme park.

Yeah.

So it's extra crazy when you're living what seems like an incredibly mundane life, which was not part of I purchased a ticket for fun and excitement. And you're like, oh, why do I have to go to the exits? Because 19 people have been crushed.

Yeah.

Like at the mall, it must just be weird to have that bleed into how mundane your day was going otherwise.

Yeah. It's not great. And I'm sure there were probably some lawsuits.

I don't know. It's Canada. Who knows if they're as litigious as us.

I mean, if you're going to be litigious, this seems like a case to litigate. If you need roller coaster accident.

We know some people.

Yeah. Attorneys. We know a few. Another accident I found that I think is like the epitome of everyone's worst fear involves falling out of the roller coaster. And this one is recent. On July 19th, 2013, Rosie Esparza, a 52-year-old grandmother, visited Six Flags over Texas and rode the New Texas Giant, a massive hybrid coaster, which is a steel track attached to a wooden frame, and it features really steep drops. Now, not to speak ill of the dead, but Rosie was a large woman, and as she boarded, she expressed concern that her restraint didn't feel secure. Unfortunately, the ride operators, the article notes, perhaps under pressure to dispatch quickly, assured her it was fine. It was not fine. As the train whipped around a high bank turn, Rosie's lap bar gave way, and she was ejected from the car and plunged over 75 feet where she landed on the metal roof of a tunnel below.

Wow.

The other riders screamed as Rosie was almost severed in half by the impact and died instantly. The investigation revealed that the German-made restraint system wasn't faulty per se, but it simply could not accommodate Rosie's body shape safely.

Germany were like, we didn't even test for someone that big. We're Germans.

I know.

We didn't, well, I guess they probably have. They land a chocolate. They probably got some big people there.

They've got chocolate. They've got Oktoberfest. They've got sausages.

Yeah, they got to have some biggies.

Whipped potatoes.

Not during World War II when they were all thin from the insane amount of amphetamines they were taking.

True.

But maybe at this point, they've got a little bigger.

The operator should not have let her ride, it notes, without a test seat clearance. That is operator error. But also, it's a good reminder that if you do see a sign outside the roller coaster that says, are you this tall to ride? Do you weigh this much? Don't try to get on if you are over those sizes because the ride is not designed to accommodate you and terrible things can happen.

Also, maybe you advocate for yourself if you are like, I don't think this fits and they are like, no, it's fine. I mean, I don't know if you have the opportunity to like, maybe if they pushed on it, it didn't give or something. It took that like G force of the whatever.

Yeah.

But I mean, I know at Disney and stuff, you know, when you have the lap bands or what have you, they always have the little yellow extra piece of cloth, but they come by and they make you pull that.

Yeah.

Pull that for me, pull that for me, so they can see like, okay, you're definitely locked in.

Yeah. Oh, well, we'll get to Disney in a minute. But before we get to them, I wanted to point out this roller coaster accident because Six Flags really should have known better. They'd already had similar accidents on Superman the Ride at Six Flags New England. Not once, but twice.

That ride, I remember being, I was in sixth grade and we went to Six Flags in New Jersey and that probably, it was probably new then. Because I remember it was like talk of the fucking field trip. Well, it wasn't a field trip. It was like a choir chorus trip. We had to go perform. It's a whole thing. But we got to go to Six Flags after.

Do you have the voice of an angel?

I definitely don't. I just needed things to do that weren't gym.

Gotcha.

And I was there and I have some other theme park, like real got sick theme park stories from that trip. But I remember everyone was talking about it because it was, I don't know if you like hung underneath it or it was some like different way of doing a roller coaster. And I remember like it was like the talk of the field trip of who's going to go on the Superman ride. And honestly, and this is, I just thought of this right now, based on some of these fucking stories you've been talking about today, Six Flags, because it stands for Six Flags Over Texas, right? That's the original.

I believe so. Yes.

Those should all be at fucking half mast every goddamn day because people be dying on these rides.

Yeah. Yeah.

That is crazy to me.

At the opening each day, they need someone to play taps on a forlorn bugle outside the gates.

Well, I think one of those flags is the Confederate flag, by the way.

What were the Six Flags? I feel like I know this, but I can't remember.

I'll look it up while you keep reading.

According to Agawam's News on Six, 22 people were sent to hospitals, mostly with minor injuries after two cars collided Monday on the Superman Ride of Steel Coaster at Six Flags New England. The park remained open through the evening, but the ride, one of the park's seven roller coasters, was closed. Quote, it was like the car that slammed into us never even slowed down, said crash victim Maddie Nichols of Hampton. My neck hurts, but it could have been worse. There were a few broken bones, facial cuts and bruises, but most of the injuries were minor, according to Deputy Fire Chief David S. Walls. Witnesses said one train of cars was leaving the platform when a second sped into the platform and slammed it from behind. It sounded like a big balloon popping, said Ariel Rosenthal, 17. He was waiting in line to get on the ride with a few family members when the crash happened. Quote, there was some smoke and I saw blood on someone's face. State inspectors and engineers from the ride's manufacturer, Intamin, combed over the brake systems to find out why the train hadn't stopped. Ultimately, the incident was attributed to a braking failure that allowed two trains on the track at once, and after about 12 days of safety inspectors and testing, Superman Ride of Steel reopened to the public. It would only be three short years before disaster struck again, and this time with deadly consequences. But first, Ed, the Six Flags, what are they?

The Six Flags over Texas, which is what I thought, stand for the six different nations that govern Texas. So it's Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America are the Six Flags. So yes, the Confederate flag is, in fact, one of the Six Flags.

Cool.

But if you go to their logo right now, the Six Flags are represented by just six kind of triangle, nondescript colored flags you'd see like hanging at a used car dealership. They're just like six fun circus flags. There are no imagery on the flags.

I'm shocked.

Yes. It is. But yeah, so it's each country or entity that controlled Texas at different times. So those are the six flags that would have flown over Texas ground.

On May 1st, 2004, 55-year-old Stanley J. Mordarski rolled up to Superman Ride of Steel, determined to experience it for himself despite the fact that he used a motorized scooter due to limited mobility and cerebral palsy. Park attendants assisted him into the train's seat. What no one realized though was that Stanley's short heavy build, 5'2 and 230 pounds, or girthy as one article described him, did not allow the t-bar lap restraint to lock securely over his lap.

Gotta get rid of this t-bar restraint. It's just put in some six-point harness seatbelt or something.

As the train climbed the towering lift hill and began its high-speed course, Stanley was already a dead man, but no one knew it yet. As the coaster careened through its course, Stanley began slipping out of his seat. Sitting near him was 29-year-old Faith Thomas, who noticed what was happening on the final fast turn towards the station. Keeping in tradition of heroic women on deadly roller coasters, she let go of her own safety bar and grabbed Stanley's shirt and suspenders, desperately trying to pull him back into the car. The train roared through the last curve, and Faith held on with all her strength, but physics worked against her and she lost her grip. Stanley was ejected from the speeding coaster and hurled out of the train to the ground below where he received fatal injuries.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. It's just, I feel like, you know, we lost Stanley. RIP, God bless.

RIP, God bless, Stanley.

But there's no way Faith is walking out of there not thinking about this day every time she closes her eyes and go to sleep. Like, you know what I mean? You're holding on to someone's suspenders, and then you go around a turn, now you're just holding suspenders. You know, it's like, what a fucking nightmare that must have been.

Yeah, it's pretty fucking awful.

Oh my God.

As all roller coaster disasters are, they're all just different flavors of terrifying. Ed, I couldn't bring this episode to a close without mentioning that so far, Hershey Park has avoided any terrible accidents except for a rumored one you can hear about if you go back and listen to theme park disasters. But our arch nemesis, Disney, has not. Take that, you fucking mouse.

I mean, the number of people going through those parks, they'd be crazy if they never had some accidents.

There are two roller coaster disasters synonymous with Disneyland that occurred on two different popular rides.

Disneyland, not Disney World.

Oh, I always get that confused.

You can fit like 10 Disneyland in Disney World. That's not an actual size comparison, but I'm saying you can do both parks of Disneyland in a day.

So, yes, I believe these are both Disneyland.

Wow.

The first was on the Matterhorn.

Okay, so we're calling that a roller coaster.

Yeah.

When I'm thinking of tradition, it definitely is like Space Mountain's roller coaster. But when I think of roller coasters as the we can see it from the street, look at it, there it goes. It has a loop. Yeah, that's they only have one, which is now the Incredicoaster. I guess technically all these other things are roller coasters, but like you don't see it from the ground. All that's happening in the mountain. I mean, all that's happening in space, whatever.

Space Mountain.

All indoor.

Space Mountain feels like an accident way to happen. The clearance on that ride seems not enough for arms and heads and legs.

I think we talked about it in the theme park. I've only ever been on it once, and it was a day that there was something wrong with it. And so they had to have the lights on the entire time. So you normally Space Mountain, for people who don't know, is like basically pitch black. It's you're in space, maybe.

Yeah, there's little twinkly lights on everything.

Yeah, so I went in and it was just bright floodlights of twisted metal and stuff that you're driving through and really just seeing behind the curtain on that one. And it was, I'm like, man, if I was any taller, I feel like I'm gonna lose my fucking head in here. Like you're really zipping through some wild shit. But I guess you're always gonna run into that, unless you're a mall, wherever the fuck that mall was in Canada, you're constrained to space, right? You gotta build all this stuff within the thing. So yeah, when I think of roller coasters, I think of big structures outside. So yeah, these are all roller coasters at Disney, but they're all indoor roller coasters.

In the early hours of January 3rd, 1984, 48-year-old Regina Dolly Young, a mother of four, was excited for one more ride on one of Disney's oldest rides, the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Now, the Matterhorn is not a ride that I think of as particularly scary, although hilariously, my wife does. She loves Disney, but hates the coasters. She likes the vibes of Disney. She'll go and study the little details and take pictures of pieces of the architecture and stuff, but she doesn't really like a lot of the rides, especially the coasters. But last time we went, I talked her on to the Matterhorn and-

Matterhorn will beat you up. Matterhorn will beat you up in those fucking bobsleds, dude.

It will. But at the end, I asked her what she thought of the Yeti popping out, and she didn't know what I was talking about. And then she admitted that she had her eyes closed the entire time.

Ah, yeah, sure.

This is not a ride that's really going to blow your hair back. It's shaky, but this is not this is not the X2. It opened in 1959 and it feels like it. The cars are...

Apparently there's a basketball court in the Matterhorn because the downstairs, there's like a lower level to the Matterhorn, which is like a break room slash like Imagineers hangout space. It has a basketball court in it, I've been told.

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. Well, another thing it had in it was a dead person because that fateful day in 1984, Regina boarded the bobsled, sat in the back seat and took off on her ride up the mountain. Somewhere along the way, though, to this day, nobody knows exactly where or how. She became unbuckled. And at the point on the track, if you've ever ridden it, the bobsleds kind of pass each other. At that point on the track where the bobsleds from the opposite sides of the mountain briefly passed, the operators saw something horrifying. Regina's body lying on the track, her limbs twisted and unmoving. The sled she'd been riding had already plunged down the next hill, but she wasn't in it. Moments later, a second bobsled came barreling down the track and careened into Regina's body at high speeds. Emergency crews responded quickly, but there was nothing they could do. She was already dead. The cause of death was massive internal injuries and head trauma. Disney immediately shut down Matterhorn for investigation, and the original report noted that Regina was not properly restrained at the time she was ejected. At the time, the ride used a lap belt, and it was suspected she'd either unbuckled it herself or it had come loose, a detail that remains controversial to this day. Her family insists that Regina wouldn't have tampered with her restraint, but Disney's official stance, not shockingly, was that she violated safety protocol.

It doesn't even seem like that should be possible. It should seem like once, and it probably is the case now, but once it's clicked in at any movement at all of the roller coaster or the ride, it should not be able to become undone by humans at all.

Yeah, well, and I think even though I'm sure their insistence that she had unbuckled herself was part of an attempt to stay out of court, they did quietly settle with the family, I'm sure, for a significant amount of money. One reason they might have been quick to settle is that this wasn't actually the first death on the Matterhorn. In 1964, so 20 years before this, a 15-year-old boy named Mark Maples also got thrown from the Matterhorn, although this case was a little different because Mark got thrown after standing up on the ride. That incident was largely written off at the time because it seemed pretty cut and dry that it was the fault of the deceased, but I think there's still a question of how he was able to stand up.

Yeah, for real.

While the ride was moving, the belts could not have been too securely fastened. But there's a nice little ghost story here too. Disney ride operators reportedly now refer to the spot where Regina fell as Dolly's Dip. Subcast members claim they feel cold spots there, and others say they've seen a shadowy figure of a woman appearing during late night test runs.

Oh my god.

So Dolly may haunt this ride. I don't know why Mark doesn't haunt the ride. Maybe he's too cool.

Or too young.

Or too young.

He was a little kid, right?

He was 15.

Well, I mean, he-

That's the age that you're like, I don't want to go to Disney.

No way. That was 64. It opened in the late 50s. I think Matterhorn was like 59. So, he definitely wanted to go to Disney. It was probably the coolest, newest thing in the fucking world at that point.

That's true. That's true. Well, for as much as I like to give my wife a hard time about being afraid of kiddie rides, she might be on to something, because Big Thunder Mountain has killed people too. And this one was much more recent.

Big Thunder Mountain seems like it would. That thing always- It seems- Not that it's rickety. It's another- I will say this about Disney. I don't always go on all the rides because I get sick, but not a lot of smooth rides they got there. They do kind of beat you up, all their rides.

Yeah, I mean, they're all- This one's newer. Big Thunder Mountain's newer, but a lot of the rides with the charm is that they're still relatively the original ride, so.

Yeah, but Big Thunder Mountain beats you up a little bit too. Not as bad as those fucking bobsleds where you're like in a stranger's lap. Yeah.

Well, on September 5th, 2003, the guide wheel assembly on the lead car came loose and fell off of Big Thunder Mountain partway through the ride, causing the front locomotive to derail inside a tunnel. The car separated from the rest of the train and slammed into the ceiling of the tunnel, then came to an abrupt stop and the passenger cars behind it rammed into it. A 22-year-old man in the front seat of the first passenger car was crushed to death by the blunt force of the impact and 10 other riders were injured in the pileup. Riders had to climb out in the dark with dust and smoke everywhere. Some trapped for more than 20 minutes in the wreckage. This was Disneyland's first coaster fatality due to mechanical failure and apparently it shook the park to its core. The resulting investigation found that the loose guide wheel wasn't properly reattached and Disney's maintenance procedures were completely overhauled as a result. The incident tarnished Disney's safety record, but in a way it helped push the entire industry to implement even stricter maintenance protocols because after all, if Disneyland could have deadly coaster derailments, any park could have deadly coaster derailments.

I will say that Disneyland, the last story you said about Matterhorn and this one that's different from the other stories you talked about was they were immediately closed for investigation.

Yes.

There was no like, oh, we have people drawing the chalk outlines as the ride's still going above them.

Yeah.

Like that sounded like the other places. Here they actually fucking closed.

Yes. Yes. So good on them for addressing the concerns. And since that time in 2003, I don't think there have been any roller coaster accidents at Disney. So ending on sort of a hopeful note there, which means, Ed, it's time to place roller coasters on the fear tier. Where are we putting them?

Pretty high, I guess. I don't like them. I don't like them. I'm going to go with four. Because every time I get on a roller coaster, I think it's going to be the time it breaks.

Yep.

Even if the numbers are against me in a way that I don't feel necessarily with like planes or something. Well, until this year. Now I am a little worried about planes flying here. I was like, oh, every piece of turbulence. I'm like, this is it. Plus, I think I told you this. I don't know if I ever had done an episode since I flew here, because usually I drive. But since the accident, I don't have a car that can do it. I got on the plane. And I'll come back to roller coasters in a second. But I got on the plane and it was the newest fucking plane I had ever been on in my life. And normally you'd be like, if anything else in life, you know, hotel, whatever, brand new, you're pumped. But I was like, oh my god, this must have been finished yesterday. Please get me on a 20 year old plane where I knew that they weren't trying to build it with shareholder value in fucking in mind. So I'm like, okay, what sixth bolt is not included on this new plane I'm on to make sure that like dividends didn't lower for these shareholders. So I genuinely had that thought when I got on this plane.

I'm not sure Boeing was any less concerned about shareholders 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

But I think maybe they were. I think maybe they were.

Well, they were more concerned.

You mean no, they were less concerned 30 years ago about the shareholder value versus building a plane that stays in the air.

Oh, I see. I see what you mean.

Yeah, so since I don't know a lot about what private equity has purchased theme parks, I'm going to go ahead and say it's three to four because I feel like it's going to be the time it breaks every time I get on. But the numbers are in my favor.

I will agree with you. I'll also put roller coasters at a four because they are scary just they're supposed to be. They're thrilling. And the thrills sometimes scare me. So they're scary on their own. And then they can also be dangerous. So I think a four, even though they're not supposed to be dangerous, I think a four is a pretty safe place to put them on the fear tier.

Yeah.

Probably the safest thing you can do this summer. If you want to avoid sharks, amoebas, deadly firework explosions.

Yeah. Who would have thought that roller coasters would technically be the safest thing in the Summer of Fear so far?

True. Not me, I guess. I didn't expect it. I didn't expect it. But with that, this has been scared all the time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And we will see you next episode. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Fifle.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

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